Maybe
by vlalekat
Summary: One-shot: Nick Valentine sits in Vault 114, waiting for something to happen and pondering the unique nature of his existence.


Maybe

Disclaimer: Bethesda and Obsidian have made something awesome. I just like to play in it.

Notes: Sometimes I make changes for better storytelling effect, and sometimes it's because I believe the in-game source may be considered unreliable and the "truth" may be somewhat different. Please enjoy, and leave feedback.

* * *

 **maybe you'll think of me**

 **when you are all alone**

 **maybe the one who is waiting for you will prove untrue**

 **then what will you do**

 **maybe you'll sit and sigh**

 **wishing that I were near, then**

 **maybe you'll ask me to come back again**

 **and maybe I'll say maybe**

There are times when Nick isn't sure what's actually his and what belongs to the past, to the Nick who came before him. Some memories, the ones from before the war, are clearly planted. There's nothing to distinguish them as such - nothing aside from how clean everything is, how the cars are rust-free and mobile or the buildings in single units and not strewn apart like oversized jigsaw puzzle pieces. There's no gleam on the edges of the world, no strange glint of light. Everything runs together.

But feelings, and opinions: he wonders how much of the ideas that occur to him are native to what he really wants or thinks and how many of his impulses were planted there by the personality dumped in his memory banks.

Maybe his very nature - the fact that he wants to question each of his notions - is pure Valentine, with nothing of the synth. Perhaps if Valentine were stripped out, nothing would be left but a blank slate?

He mulls these questions again, coming to no new conclusions. Sitting in the overseer's office of the unfinished vault, he turns over the same queries he'd been running for decades.

Taking a puff of his cigarette, he chuckles to himself. What's the point in a synth like himself smoking? He certainly can't die of cancer, but what's the point in doing it other than that the other Nick had smoked? He doesn't get much out of it, but it does seem to quiet the voice in his head that demands he do it.

If Nick did it, he supposes he has to do it, too.

Is this how people feel, inside? Do they have these desires they can't explain? Do they question them?

He doesn't know how long he's been trapped in here, and yet somehow the synth knows that he's been stuck below ground, in this office, for five days, sixteen hours, twenty-three minutes and eight seconds. After all these years, he still can't seem to entirely reconcile the duality of the synth's computer programming and his own human cognition.

He looks down at the hand holding the cigarette and sighs at the exposed metal skeleton. Perhaps less than human, these days.

Nick - or the vehicle that carries his consciousness, anyway - sighs and stubs out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. He wonders how long Skinny plans to keep him down there. Given that his body could likely keep going past the second coming, he finds himself wishing that they'd finish him if they weren't going to release him. He's already hacked into the overseer's terminal and read the contents multiple times, and if he doesn't find some new form of entertainment, the memories will drown him.

Unbidden, Jenny comes to mind. Her shiny strawberry hair, and the way she looked at him- defiant, serious - when she said that Winter had to end up in prison no matter what.

"He's bad news, Nick." Her voice was serious. "No matter what, we've gotta make sure he gets put away." She'd grown up in Cambridge, and sometimes, when she spoke about Winter especially, the New England in her voice made him melt a little. She talked fast and thought fast, and kept him on his toes.

"You got it, doll," he'd said. Or Nick said. It's an old memory, a pre-war memory. It's Nick he was thinking of, not whatever he is now.

There's one memory of Nick that stands out. Before he met Jenny working on the Campbell case, before he made his bona fides staking out Easy Jake McCann. A moment, nothing more: standing in front of the mirror in his new fedora and trench coat, the very picture of Humphrey Bogart. He couldn't be more than twenty-five at that moment, and fresh off the police force after he'd discovered Captain O'Kelley was skimming off the top. His jaw was square, a dark five o-clock shadow spreading across it. His face hadn't yet lost the baby roundness that it sacrificed by the time he was thirty, and the permanent dark circles hadn't yet taken up residence under his eyes.

Nick had really thought he was something in that coat, with his new hat. It was a cliche, sure, and even then he'd known that, but there was still something about it.

He rifles in his pocket for the cigarette pack, and pulls out a fresh one. He lights it with the classy gold flip lighter he slipped out of Dino's pocket as they wrestled him in here. For a moment, his thoughts flit to Ellie. A resourceful, smart girl. He hopes she won't come looking for him. His hopes she'll be okay without him.

He takes a long drag, the fan in his throat sucking in the smoke and holding it an appropriate amount of time before reversing and sending it back out. A foolish exercise and yet...even in captivity he can't bring himself to stop. Is this what human addiction is like?

He takes another long pull on the cigarette, and a sigh escapes him. Again, this is foolish; it's not as if he needs to breathe, or that sighing will help at all. Counter-intuitively, he feels a little better.

The couch on which he slumps is lumpy with age, and infested with fleas that attempt to bite his polymer flesh and collapse, disappointed. Part of him is disgusted, but another part - the synth perhaps? - looks at the little creatures dispassionately, blankly. They can't really bother him unless a large number get in his joints, and the chances of that happening are slim indeed.

Jenny comes back to his mind again. He thinks of how proud she was to tell him about finishing salutatorian in her class. She was the first in her family to finish college, the first to even attempt something as rigorous as law school. She was the first woman to make ADA in half a century.

He sits on the uneven couch and thinks of her slim form, dressed in a dark navy suit, in the court the day that Greasy O'Connor got send to the big house. Greasy stood, his hair slicked back with pomade, and face defiant. As the guards wrestled him out of the court, he said something under his breath to her. Jenny had come back to the prosecutor's table and snapped her briefcase closed with a firm hand. Her face was calm, but there was something in her manner that had made Nick nervous.

Outside, in the chilly February air, he'd dared to ask her if anything was wrong.

"Of course not," she'd snapped. She'd been beautiful, and smar,t and brave, but no one would ever accuse her of going easy on him.

He'd held up his hands in a placating motion, cigarette clenched between the pointer and middle fingers of his right hand. "Easy, easy. I was chewing the fat." He had to believe they'd both known that was a lie, but it did seem to work.

"I just want to know my future wife is safe. Can't be worrying about you with Winter's thugs looking to hit you."

Her expression hadn't seemed to change, but somehow her eyes were narrowed. She took the cigarette from his hand, turned it, and thoughtfully puffed at it.

"You just ask me to marry you, Valentine?"

He'd cocked a wry grin, a Bogart grin. "I guess so."

She'd looked out past the white columns, down the stairs to where a few of Greasy's boys lingered, chatting and pretending to look non-threatening.

"Took you long enough." Her fingers had slipped the cigarette back into his hand then. She blew a plume of smoke from between perfect ruby lips and met his eyes. Hers were the same blue as the sky behind them.

Nick had taken a long drag of his cigarette then; he did the same now, remembering. "I guess dames need to remember that quality guys like me can't be rushed."

This had earned an eye-roll from her.

"I have some work left to do," she'd told him. "Will I see you at Sal's tonight?"

"Of course, doll." He'd kissed her cheek then, and headed off to get a drink and some information off Moony at the Shamrock. If he'd known it was the last time he'd see her alive, would he have stayed? Would he have walked instead to the top of the Bunker Hill memorial and dropped?

All he knows is that a week later, the original Nick had walked into an office on the C.I.T. that smelled of motor oil and rubbing alcohol and allowed them to scan his brain. There, everything stopped for a hundred years? More? He'll never know.

What happened to the original Nick? Did he make it to the Great War? He was a resourceful bastard - did he make it through the war and into the brave new world of machines and violence? Did he die in the blast that created the Glowing Sea, or from drinking irradiated water a year or ten later? Did he die of cancer caused by the radstorms, or did he die of cancer from smoking for thirty years?

Did he die of a broken heart?

Did he drop from Bunker Hill's monolith in a long, slow dive with the ground rising up to meet him?

Sometimes he feels lucky to continue Nick's story, even in this prototype. Other times, the fact that this body isn't decaying the way it's supposed to makes him feel frantic.

A man is supposed to be scared of his inevitable demise, but somehow knowing you'll outlive everything you care about it just as frightening. Maybe more so?

The cigarette has burned down to ash between his fingers. He finds a spot in the ashtray to put it out; it would take incredibly hot temperatures to completely disable him, but it's still better not to set fire to the vault.

For something to do, he stands and begins pacing the room. He's already checked it thoroughly - there's little chance of him getting out any way but the front door - but he can't just sit there in this mausoleum catching dust for eternity.

This drive to keep moving, to keep searching - is it really him? Or is it Nick?

Is he Nick, or is he something new, some hybrid?

There's a clang at the door, a metallic knock that reverberates around the overseer's office. The sound careens off the walls, triggering the memory of a headache he'd long forgotten about.

"How you doin' in there, Valentine?" The voice is snarky, teasing. "Feeling hungry? Want a snack?"

That could be no one but Dino. Only that lout would be dumb enough to tease a synth with the idea of food.

Nick take two slow steps towards the door. Maybe there's an opportunity here.

"Keep talkin', meathead. It'll give Skinny Malone more time to think about how he's gonna bump you off."

If he could just get Dino away from the door. Maybe he could find some way to open it from inside without anyone noticing. Failing that, maybe they'd send someone even stupider down, someone who might fall for the old open-the-door-I'm-dying-in-here con.

It's worth a try.

There's a humorless laugh from the other side of the door. Silently, Nick takes another step closer. "Don't gimme that crap, Valentine."

Then there's one loud, clear shot. A wet thump as something hits the door. A groan.

If he didn't know better, he'd swear someone just iced Dino.

Maybe this is his chance, the one he's been waiting for. He's never considered himself much of a damsel in distress - Nick didn't either, but at this point anything is better than sitting in this cell alone until his circuits finally burn out.

Maybe this is his chance.

"Hey you," he calls out.

Maybe.


End file.
